Category: Marketing Consultancy

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28th July 2017

The Importance of Property Branding

As the demand for property rises and new homes start to seem like they ‘sell themselves’ sometimes brand can be ignored or at least pushed to ‘second place’ behind the immediate requirement to build and feed the demand. This is a wasted opportunity for additional profits, building brand recognition and long term corporate growth. While square footage is at a premium in Ireland, developers are not. Don’t sell yourself short!

 

Why Invest In Your Brand?

By failing to build a brand, property developers can not only be losing out on potential additional profits but also long-term gains by building a reputation and workable case studies for future opportunities. In today’s world, the reputation and brand of the developer and high-profile case studies are central to survival and long-term success. Building your property brand ensures profits, prominence and prestige.

 

Developing Your Brand

So what benefits will a focus on brand bring? There are tangible and intangible gains for both developer and buyer:

● Developing a sense of place and community

● Creating a greater sense of pride of place and belonging for a new home development or town centre

● Adding monetary value to the householder as an investment purchase

● Adding monetary value to the developer by phasing the sales releases (a potential buyer is more likely to remember and be enticed by ‘Luxury Lake View: Phase 2 ’

● Future-proofing both the area and the investment for further phases

 

Not Just a Name

For a new home development, a brand is not just about a new development name, but about the qualities that associated with that name and how these are expressed physically through house style, landscaping, play areas, street naming, road signage and wayfinding.

This is combined with communication touch points during the planning, build and sales phases from brochures, signage, advertising and show units through mobile digital applications such as videos, 3D walkthroughs, websites and even virtual reality show units. A strong sense of the place is paramount to getting most customers to connect with the property.

 

Survive or Thrive – Let IDEA Be Your Guide

In over two decades of working with the property industry in Europe, IDEA has seen many great branding triumphs, as well as a large number of developers who failed to focus on developing their brand. Can you guess which group are more successful?

In our experience, those that survive the occasional and inevitable downturns, invest in their corporate profile and reputation – developing their brand as high quality, conscientious developers. Those that endure, have focussed on building the brands of their developments – and this has been fundamental to their success.

Successful property developers pay attention to brand building. This not only increases their profits in the short term but also helps achieve future development opportunities, impacts planning decisions and helps attract partners and investors- inevitably securing their long-term success.

Sink or Swim – Why Brands Must Evolve

21st March 2017

Sink or Swim – Why Brands Must Evolve

Branding Strategy

“To Evolve: to change or develop often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state: to develop by a process of evolution.”

The world as we know it is in a constant state of change. So it is imperative now more than ever that your brand must evolve and adapt to changes in both the market and your customer base. Why? Because your customers’ needs are always changing and your brand needs to ensure it can keep up or be at risk of losing them.

Know your Customer

When undergoing any change it is critical to always keep your end goal in mind. Ask yourself who are you selling to? Who does your messaging need to resonate with? In most cases this will be your end customer, so evolving and adapting from the bottom up will ensure you can now only listen to your customers’ needs – but you can effectively and efficiently deliver on them.

Remember, it’s not always about being the biggest or even the best, it’s about engaging with your customer so they feel like they belong with your brand. This brings brand loyalty and returning customers.

Adding Customer Experience

Brands need to be streamlined to communicate efficiently with customers who are becoming more demanding than ever. You must offer them more than a product or service; the most successful brands offer their customers unrivalled positive customer experiences.

By being proactive about your brand experience, you can position yourself for success. Additionally, by fine tuning your design and messaging, you are creating consistency across all of your brand touchpoints which will lead to great customer experience. Customer satisfaction (analysed with surveys and focus groups) can be a powerful and cost-effective tool, which can help you maintain a successful brand.

It’s not just about creating awareness or a persona – you need to create meaning for your end customer and stay ahead of your competition. This process needs to be thought through in detail, and a great way of doing this is to conduct an in-depth workshop. A quick fix is never a good solution and if you don’t adapt to address this in detail, it can derail future plans and projects. Quantitative and qualitative research can bring valuable results and help your roadmap your journey to success.

Stand Out From The Competition

Competition is increasing, as hundreds of startups emerge from the market, more enthusiastic and willing to do more to gain a customer base. One of the most important steps to gaining a market share is your website. To succeed in delivering your brand messages effectively, you need a sleek, modern website design that is easy to navigate and presents information quickly. Attention spans are decreasing, so brands needs to be aware of this ever-changing landscape in order to keep all elements of their business up to date. Websites are crucial, as these are one of the main points of contact with your customers. It is also very important when designing and developing your website to make sure that it is built in such a way to allow scalability. If your brand evolves and changes over time, you need to be able to update your website to reflect this.

When analysing your brand and business plans some can hold an “it’s not broken, so what is there to fix” view. IDEA would champion the alternative view that while your brand may not seem broken it could benefit from some maintenance. A machine that isn’t regularly oiled is more likely to fall apart.

Look at Apple – the world’s largest information technology company. Founded in 1976, the company’s logos has been re-envisioned and redesigned several times. Each revamp represents a fresh approach for Apple – yet while certain elements such as colour have changed, it’s apparent who the company is. Ask yourself this, would Apple now be worth an estimated $178.1 billion if they were still promoting their brand using their 1976 logo? Admittedly your company might not be Apple, but why not aim to be?

Strategy for Success

Always analyze and review your branding – you can either be moving forward or standing still. So ask yourself this where are you, and more importantly – where are your competition?

We believe there is always something you can improve on. Being stagnant will not bring success, so why not choose to be a champion? IDEA are here to advise on how you can build and develop your brand to help you engage with your customers and bring customer loyalty. Why not get in touch?

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14th November 2016

5 tips to win when bidding – every time

Over the past decade the amount of business won through tenders has increased dramatically, and so too has the standard of submissions. Assessment panels and awarding authorities have seen a dramatic increase in the standard of content and presentation of bids at all levels, whether it be for a major infrastructural project worth millions of euros or a supply contract for considerably less.

In managing any bid or tender we recommend that you consider the following five points:

1. Be compliant

Regardless of how well written or presented your submission is, it MUST comply with the awarding authority’s guideline. Failure to do so will simply result in you losing points, or even worse, being disqualified.

2. Planning and Team Building

Many bids require the input of a variety of internal and external individuals. Always complete the easy sections first. These are usually CVs, case studies and even accounts. Get them out of the way to ensure your team has ample time on the bid-specific content. Create a spreadsheet that identifies all contributors and set agreed deadlines – and stick to them.

3. Executive Summary

Always include an Executive Summary. The allows you to present wider details about your company and why it is the perfect candidate for the bid. It also provides an opportunity to include Infographics, charts and corporate imagery. The Executive Summary may provide the awarding authority with a sense of your organisation that the clinical answers required in the bid submission does not deliver.

4. Invest in presentation

The standard of material being supplied for tenders has increased dramatically over the past decade. If the awarding body requires hard copies, invest in the presentation by applying good design values to the material. If your in-house people are not sufficiently confident, then hire a specialist, particularly if the prize is worth it.

5. Your Brand

Remember that you’re delivering your brand in any bid, and therefore you need to ensure that it is delivered to the highest possible standard. You should also think ahead, and if you don’t win a specific bid you may be elected for future ones, particularly if the awarding body recognises the quality and depth of your services.

 

Nicholas Cloake MIDI

Bid & Retail Account Director
IDEA

The IDEA Bid Management team is led by Nicholas Cloake (previously of Baseline) who has directed and managed over €2.5 Billion successful tenders over the past 10 years. His experience combined with the creative, marketing and project management resources of IDEA ensures that our clients will enjoy a world-class level of expertise and service.

Check out some other works done by Idea Digital:

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19th October 2016

Solving Problems Through Effective Design

Do you assume design means creating something that’s good to look at? Think again… design is a complex process which encompasses many elements in order to reach the final destination (and final sign off from the client!).

While an essential element of design is to make it aesthetically pleasing, it’s not a single, deciding factor or end goal. By examining and getting a better understanding of what, how, when, to whom the design is benefitting, you gain a better understanding of the brief and create a more effective and accomplished end product. In analysing, and solving all the questions involved in the process, you are contributing to a great design, as well as meeting your clients needs.

Designers are essentially problem solvers, interpreting and clarifying problems through design thinking.

Deciphering design briefs means adopting a different approach to traditional problem solving. A designer needs to not just be methodical, they must also expand to be both flexible and innovative. A designer must examine different perspectives in order to come up with different solutions to meet the client’s needs.

Defining the problem is one of the most important parts of the design thinking process – it gives the designer the right direction to explore. Asking the right questions means you can finally think about the possible solutions. It is important to have several options because a problem will always have more than one solution. You can then decide on which solves the design problem more effectively.

The Breakdown of the Design Thinking made by The Stanford D.School helps to visualise how this process can be utilised:

  1. Empathise – Understanding your audience
  2. Define – Establish a point of view
  3. Ideate – Focus on possible solutions
  4. Prototype – Try out multiples solutions
  5. Test – Find the best solution for your audience

Using this process we can see that defining the problem is just the first step to meeting your clients needs. Understanding that the design is there to solve a question is the first step, you can then proceed to the next steps of understanding, establishing and finding the best solution for your client and audience, and wow them with your designs!

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